


Lacuna

by ariskamalt



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Black Paladin Allura (Voltron), Dialogue Heavy, Family Feels, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gay Shiro (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Allura (Voltron), Multi, POV Lance (Voltron), Season 7 fix-it, Slow Burn, Space Pirates, The Paladins of Old, Time Travel, adam: i lived bitch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-06-27 06:26:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariskamalt/pseuds/ariskamalt
Summary: la·cu·na (n) an unfilled space or gap-Obviously, they’re not dead. Not dead equals no space-time rifts devouring the universe. He’s fuzzy on how it felt being electrocuted until his heart stopped, but the brilliant darkness afterwards didn’t consist of four other people bickering and scanning the abyss before concluding the same thing.Wide-open space. No lions, no family, no quirky animal companions to give them a quick way out. They have nothing except each other.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DuoMaxwell2x4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuoMaxwell2x4/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *edit: my wonderful IRL friend made me a cover for this work and I'm in love!

-

Lance clutches the broadsword with both hands, leather from his fingerless gloves crunching on the grip. In front of him is a faceless enemy he knows he can defeat. He’s Lance. Adrenaline-junkie, asteroid-diver, top pilot and best fighter. He’s—

“Lance? Lance, are you okay?” 

He gasps awake. Droplets are floating inside his helmet, wobbling around and clinging to the visor. A dream. And crying?

With a few button presses at his wrist the water evaporates. Somebody touches his ankle and it tilts him upright but he keeps going, almost wheeling his arm in reflex before cadet and Voltron training kicks in and he relaxes. They’re free-floating in space. Shaky, ragged breaths are crackling through the comms. He does a few front-flips, catching glimpses of everyone’s pallid faces. 

“What happened?” Keith rasps. 

“The space time rifts. We. We destroyed them? Right?” Hunk says. His eyes catch Lance spinning and he reaches out again to steady him. 

Lance shakes himself and gets with the program. He remembers light, exploding behind and around them, shaking Red with such force he thought his teeth would crack as he bit down.

Obviously they’re not dead. Not dead equals no space-time rifts devouring the universe. He’s fuzzy on how it felt being electrocuted until his heart stopped, but the brilliant darkness afterwards didn’t consist of four other people bickering and scanning the abyss before concluding the same thing.  
Wide-open space. No lions, no family, no quirky animal companions to give them a quick way out. They have nothing except each other. 

He swallows. “Maybe the lions will come to us?”

“I don’t sense them anywhere nearby,” Allura replies. She tilts her head at him. “I’m not even sure my connection to Blue would be strong enough to reach such a distance.”

“Let me try. Shiro is still inside of Black; I know I can reach him,” Keith says. He closes his eyes and squints. Even the top right corner of his lip twitches. When he takes a sudden loud breath, Lance manages to jump out of his skin in zero G. “No. Nothing.”

“We’ve all performed enough heroic acts for this movement,” Pidge says. “Nice try though.”

“I don’t even think I can summon my bayard.” Hunk opens his palm and stares at it. The shadow of the yellow bayard materializes, then flickers away. “Too tired from. Well, everything.”

“What’s the chance that if we just fly in one direction forever we’ll bump into a planet?” Lance asks. “Anything has to be better than sitting out here waiting for something to come by and gobble us up.”

“Highly unlikely,” Pidge deadpans. 

Lance crosses his legs best he can while floating and chews on the inside of his lip. Keith shrugs, their eyes catching as Lance begins drifting a few inches away from the rest of the team. They both raise one eyebrow at each other at the same time. 

“Are we gonna hold hands or what?” Keith asks. 

“What?” Lance blinks. Heat flushes up through his suit. 

“You’re floating away from us,” Allura says, and her arm stretches in true horror-alien fashion to snag his hand and drag him back in the middle of their space wading circle. 

Lance chuckles weakly as they all grab hands, Hunk on his left side and Allura on the other. Their thrusters sputter out and they spin a little from momentum because of Newton’s bitch ass. He prays whatever eventually stops them won’t have teeth…or be particularly hungry. 

With their luck it probably would. 

Hunk snoozes. Keith and Pidge fiddle with the red suit, programming an automatic timer for sound offs. Lance adjusts his cramping fingers in Allura’s grip and side-eyes her. Her eyes are closed, face peaceful and meditative. A few twitches and rolls of her fingers say she’s not quite there yet. 

“Got it,” Pidge says, grinning giving a cheeky thumbs-up at Keith. “It should notify you every dobosh.” 

The first few doboshes are easy. They let Hunk sleep through them, then Pidge conks out and Hunk wakes up. By the fourth, Lance’s shoulder is cramping. He lets go of Allura’s hand to stretch it out and she mumbles something incomprehensible and paws at the air beside her, before her eyes fly open to glare at him. 

“I thought you were still meditating,” he says, and takes her hand again. She shakes her head, mumbling again, and wrapping his hand up tight. “Sorry.”

Hunk lets go of both Keith and Lance’s hands, giving a short spurt of his thrusters so he can turn his back to them and mime kissing someone before he comes back around. He chuckles as Lance makes a disgusted noise. 

“Are y’all…?” Keith begins. “You and Allura…?”

“First of all,” Lance begins. “Don’t say ‘y’all’ to me ever again. Second, I’m not a mind reader, so you’ll have to fill in that gap yourself.”

Hunk snickers. Keith purses his lips, eyes rolling. “Forget I said anything.”

As Hunk rejoins the circle and Keith begins trying his hand at meditating, with Allura and Pidge sleeping, Lance half-turns to Hunk. A sick feeling builds as his crawling, ant-busy thoughts start acting like they might form into coherent sentences sometime soon. 

When he speaks, it comes out as a crack, quiet yet not as it filters through the comms in their helmets. “Hunk?”

“Hm?” 

“Do you think we’ll settle down when we get back to Earth?” He speaks fast, sighing as Hunk’s brows raise. “Like. If we will ever be truly done with Voltron, enough for us to start living our own lives? Have our own families?”

“Letting space get to your head?” Hunk says, and chuckles. 

“I’m being serious!” Lance snaps. “We can’t be paladins forever; don’t you want the next generation to be prepared and actually trained? I think if it came down to it, I’d much rather have the next group of paladins know what they’re getting into.”

Hunk takes a deep breath, before squeezing Lance’s hand in his. “We deserve happiness too. The lions chose us and we came out alright, didn’t we?” His face falls. “Well, maybe not at this exact moment. But I don’t regret it. Not one bit.”

“Nah,” Lance breathes. “Me neither.” He glances over at Allura, then at Pidge, then at Keith, who, without either of them noticing, had opened his eyes and eavesdropped, not that he had any choice in the matter. They look at each other for a moment. Lance’s throat aches. It hurts to talk, but Hunk is still watching him, expectant. “How could we?”

-

Twenty doboshes pass. Keith does roll call. They’ve seen no space entities of importance, and everyone’s stomachs are gurgling so loud that the comms are filled with the sounds of pained digestive systems.

Allura groans, annoyed. “How am I supposed to meditate with all this noise?”

“How can you even focus,” Keith says. He lets out a long sigh and it sounds like someone is breathing directly into Lances inner ear. “I can’t stop thinking about salted melon.”

Pidge crumples over in half, clutching at her stomach. Hunk and Lance bump shoulders, holding onto each other pinkie-style. “I see food,” Hunk mumbles. “Coming right…for us.”

“It’s just your mind playing tricks on you,” Pidge replies, still hunched over. “Besides, you _would_ be the one—”

“Be quiet!” Lance snaps. He blinks, lips parted as Pidge whips her head up, startled, but then Hunk is shaking their pinky link with enough force to almost yank his shoulder out of socket. “What, dude—” 

“Look!” 

Hunk, facing backwards, points as a swarm of goo begins splatting them. It covers them head to toe in a few ticks. Lance feels both links of either side of him let go. He fires his thrusters blindly and shoots away from the swarm, wiping at his visor and flicking his hand violently when the stuff clings. 

“What the quiznack! That is not food goo!” Allura yells. 

“Where did that come from?” Lance wonders. “Geez, this stuff is like slime. We’re going to be cleaning it of our suits for weeks.”

“Stop!” Pidge yelps. “Don’t wipe it off! My suit says it’s Olkarion in origin!”

“We’re nowhere near the Olkari’s star system,” Allura replies. Lance sees arcs of blue and follows the rest of the team’s thrusters through his smeared view. “At least, we weren’t when we fought Lotor.”

“Could the blast have displaced us that far?” Keith asks. Lance shrugs, pushing at some goop on his forearm. It indents, the suctions back. “Princess, do you know any of these constellations?” 

“Hard to tell,” Allura replies. Lance turns and sees her face has been entirely gooped. She wipes at it again, then looks around. He snickers. They all look like idiots. Covered head to toe in fluffy green slime. When she lifts her arm to point a few strings connect her arm and torso, dangling. “I never did have time to study the entire updated star-map after waking up.”

“You don’t think it’s another distress signal? We left Olkarion heavily fortified with its own defenses and a squadron of rebel fighters. There’s no way it would have fallen without us being notified,” Pidge says. Her wrist HUD flickers and she growls, tearing at some of the slime with her fingers. 

“We haven’t seen Sendak since he destroyed that Galran planet’s shields,” Lance says. “Could he have slipped under our noses while we were dealing with Shiro and Lotor?”

“Lotor told me Sendak was busy gathering forces in the Galra Empire before he struck a first blow on the Coalition. Now…there’s no way of knowing,” Allura whispers. Her words drop away into silence punctured by soft breathing over the comms. “Olkarion would be a sizeable and…tempting target.”

Hunk floats by them all, snapping a small broken piece of slime between his fingers. “Anyone else feel like they’re being turned into a sculpture?”

Lance turns to look at him and feels the resistance tug against his suit. He whips around to the nearest teammate, Keith, and grabs him by the elbow. “Stay together!”

The slime begins crackling. As everyone forms a chain, grabbing on before it solidifies entirely, a wormhole opens with a snap in the open space in front of them. Unable to even look up, Lance watches the bottom half of the wormhole as it swirls blue and promising before a sizeable cargo ship lowers itself to their level. Green-runed accents. A grey, stone-like exterior. The pilot waves at them with a smile, unmistakable. Olkari.

-

After the Olkari ship devours them, a gentle dose of gravity smacks their immobile, attached bodies to the floor of the cargo hold as the smiling Olkarion alien leaves the cockpit to stare at them, scratching their head.

Lance groans, feebly wiggling his toes inside of his suit. “What the quiznack is going on here!”

“Has there been an attack on Olkarion?” Allura asks. She growls under her breath. “Why are we being restrained? We’re the Paladins of Voltron, we are in alliance with the Olkari.”

“Are our translators on?” Hunk mumbles after a long, drawn-out moment of silence between them and the Olkari pilot.

“You are not the Voltron paladins,” the pilot says. They give a slight chuckle. “I will take you to Queen Allura so she may decide your fate, considering you were captured along the exact route we set our probes on to catch those pesky pirates.”

“Queen?” Lance whispers. 

“Queen Allura?” Allura repeats. “What are you talking about? I am Princess Allura and I do not remember requesting that the Olkari set out probes for anything, lest of all pirates.”

The Olkari pilot doesn’t say anything for a moment. Lance gets a good view of their boots as they walk away, then Allura is gasping and standing up in his peripheral, all of the goo melted off of her like viscous water. She undoes her helmet and the pilot mutters something sharp under their breath that Lance’s helmet can’t even translate. 

“My queen,” the pilot says. “Why didn’t you say something before? What are you doing way out here—”

“I am not a queen of Olkarion, they are a self-governed people,” Allura snaps. “Where are we? Where are you taking us?”

The pilot dips their head at the tone of her voice. “We are self-governed, but united under a single banner.” They dip deeper, almost into a bow, then raise their head. “Your banner. Altea’s.”


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance blinks sharply. His ears and eyes are hot. “I forgot you weren’t there,” he says. 
> 
> Keith gives a light chuckle, then stops. “Uh, no?” He says. Lance presses his back hard against the wall, staring out the helm at the universe going by, as Keith scratches at the side of his neck and clears his throat. “Where was I…supposed to be?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks for continuing on this journey with me! My friend is making me a cover for this fic and I'm so excited! I think it will make you guys excited too with what it will reveal about the future plot of this work. Hold tight! This chapter is a lot of moving around, probing at some character stuff in-between.
> 
> Also, I can't decide if I want to title chapters or not. If I did, this one would be called 'conversation, interrupted' or 'Allura recieves that good support and validation she deserves.'

Uncomfortable, awkward silence fills the cargo hold as, for the first time since fighting Lotor, destroying the Castleship, losing the lions and being abandoned in deep space, emotions that aren’t his own thud across Lance’s mind, digging talons into the pit of his stomach. Rage. Grief. Confusion. He closes his eyes, trying not to linger in them. 

“I cannot do this again,” Allura whispers, barely audible. “I cannot get my hopes up and have them broken again.” Her voice cracks. “My Altea is gone.”

“Queen Allura, if I may,” the pilot says. “I’m not quite sure what has happened, but if you allow me to contact our outpost we can arrange a wormhole to Altea for you. And handle the rest of these pirates whichever way you see fit.”

“We’re not pirates!” Pidge yells.

“These are _my paladins_ ,” Allura says, soft. Lance bites his bottom lip, suppressing a grin. “You may release them. Those are my orders.”

Without another word, the pilot goes back to the front of their ship. Lance sighs in relief as the goo melts off. He pries his fingers off Keith’s elbow and rolls onto his stomach before sitting up and pinching some of the melted goo between his fingers. It slides away, no longer willing to stick. 

The pilot takes a few tentative steps back towards them, mouth wide and eyes sparkling. They lift their hands to their mouth, gasping. “Color-coded armor! You really are Voltron paladins! But w-where did you come from?”

“We don’t really have a control variable to compare our past location against,” Pidge replies. 

“How can you wormhole without an Altean controlling the teladuv?” Allura asks. 

“Do you not have paladins wherever uh, this is?” Hunk adds. 

Lance stands up and brushes himself off, watching as the pilot glances between all of them while bouncing up and down on their toes, barely able to contain themselves, their mouth curved into a pleased ‘o.’ Before they can answer any questions a signal begins pinging from their HUD. Gasping, the pilot whirls and falls upon their controls. 

“Kiran, report in. You have been stalled at your location for 12 clicks. Has there been a problem with your mission?” 

“No!” Kiran yelps. “I captured—no, I have discovered Princess Allura and four other beings. They are the Paladins of Voltron.”

“What?” The voice on the other end of the communication line stutters. “I’m requesting a video confirmation—”

Before they can finish, Kiran presses multiple buttons and a video feed blows up on-screen. Lance holds up a peace sign as a confused Olkari face fills the screen, mouth agape before they lean forward, eyes growing wider. Kiran slides backwards, arms held out and fingers wiggling at them as everyone stands together, waving and smiling weakly. “Ta-da!” Kiran sings.

“Bring them in at once,” the Olkari demands. Behind them, more Olkari are peeking and gossiping, pointing at the screen. Some even seem to snap pictures. “I will…send word to Queen Allura of your discovery.” The feed disappears. 

“So far this is feeling a lot less hostile than any other hot mess we’ve landed in,” Hunk comments with a shrug as Kiran gazes at him in askance. “Usually there’s more fighting involved.”

“Let’s just stay on our toes,” Keith mutters, sitting back with his arms crossed. He frowns as the team turns to him and scratches a hand across his bicep, before glancing over at Lance. Lance nods, giving a quick, “He’s right,” before popping his helmet off and dragging in a breath of fresh O2. 

Hunk and Pidge don’t take their helmets off but split up, activating their scanners and exploring the ship. Allura stands near Kiran in the cockpit watching as they activate the thrusters. She lets her hair down and fluffs it. 

“I’ve never met Queen Allura,” Kiran rambles, busy with the controls but watching her at the same time. “I was told she was beautiful, but you are like starlight.”

Allura smiles. Lance blinks a couple times as a light blush dances across her cheeks. “Thank you,” she says. “We have been in a battle and floating in space for many doboshes, so I’m sure I can’t look as well as I would like to.”

“What sort of battle!” Kiran bursts, before covering their mouth. “I apologize.”

“No, I’ll tell you,” Allura says, and sits down in the empty co-pilot seat as Kiran smiles big. 

Lance leans back against the wall between the cargo hold and the cockpit, arms crossing. He watches Pidge and Hunk, their heads pressed together as they whisper furiously, Pidge pointing at something on her scanner. Then he looks back at Allura, story-telling with Kiran. Before he can even glance over, he feels eyes on him, burning. Keith raises a brow as he follows the feeling to him. 

Without a word, Keith slides his helmet off and gives a dog-like shake, hair flying in all directions before he tucks some stray pieces away from his right cheek, exposing that scar. Lance narrows his eyes at it. 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Keith says, putting his helmet down on the floor so he can re-cross his arms. “Maybe later, but not right now.”

“Are you worried?” Lance asks instead. He tilts his head, swallowing hard around some emotion. “About Shiro?”

“Wherever the lions are, my mother should be with them. And Coran,” Keith says. “They’ll keep him safe.”

“You’re probably right,” Lance says. “You said earlier that Shiro was inside of Black?”

“That body was just a clone,” Keith explains. He looks down, picking at a fingernail. “But I talked with him—the real Shiro—and he’s been in Black’s consciousness since our fight with Zarkon.”

Lance’s stomach lurches. He stares at Keith, unable to say anything for such a long pause that Keith almost steps forward, concerned. “That explains...so much. We needed Shiro. We needed him for our fight on Olkarion and he wasn’t there and then he showed up but it was almost like a ghost, and then I heard him calling my name, but when I asked him about it he didn’t know what I was talking about and I thought maybe something was wrong, but that was our Shiro and the entire time I was talking to the clone. Oh my God.”

“Lance, slow down,” Keith says. He takes a step forward. “What battle? What happened?”

Lance blinks sharply. His ears and eyes are hot. “I forgot you weren’t there,” he says. 

Keith gives a light chuckle, then stops. “Uh, no?” He says. Lance presses his back hard against the wall, staring out the helm at the universe going by, as Keith scratches at the side of his neck and clears his throat. “Where was I…supposed to be?”

Allura gives a sudden gasp from the cockpit. “Everyone look!”

Kiran squeaks as the rest of the team squeeze into the cockpit, leaving them barely any room to navigate. Lance presses his face as close to the view as he can. Olkarion is the same planet they left it as, no Galra invasion evident. He relaxes a fraction as they swoop through a familiar cloudy atmosphere into the planet's perpetual sunset. 

But it’s not their Olkarion. “What…happened?” Pidge breathes. 

As far as they can see the planet is a sprawling city-scape, no defensive cannons or walls. The architecture is similar but instead of the harsh geometric squares and rectangles that dominated their Olkarion's main city, this one is more curved, full of lush greenery that paints every building in blooming flowers, bridges connected by roots and a main plaza marked by a tree so massive it hangs over half of the city. 

“Welcome to Olkarion!” Kiran chirps, and flies them under the boughs of the massive tree, laughing as they croon in awe as giant purple blooms start falling from the buffets of wind created by the ship. 

“Are we dreaming or are we dead?” Hunk says. “We’re definitely dead, right?”

“Is it more likely that we’re dream sharing or that we all ended up in the same after-life?” Pidge replies, and Hunk gasps in revelation, asking which would be cooler. Pidge hums in thought. 

“Guys,” Keith reminds them tersely. “Toes? Remember?”

Lance, still trying to comprehend the size and color of the blooms, bobs up and down on his tip-toes, nodding. “Toes,” he repeats, monotone. Keith sighs loudly, muttering under his breath. 

Kiran finishes circling the tree and begins speaking Olkariet, their fingers flying across the controls. A few more minutes of flying over the city, away from the main plaza, and Kiran brings them down on a massive landing bay, sticking out in the middle of all the forestry like a sore, obsidian-black thumb. 

Lance puts his helmet back on and Kiran’s Olkariet translates to English. “-thrusters off. Docking complete.” Kiran pulls a lever to his right and the back door that swallowed them before now drops open with a hiss. A familiar face waits for them at the bottom of the ramp. 

“Ryner!” Pidge says and bounds forward to embrace the Olkari leader like she always does. 

Ryner gives a light chuckle, propping her hands against Pidge’s shoulders to hold her at arms length. Pidge takes a few steps back as the matriarch’s eyes search her face. “I’m sorry,” she says, as her expression crinkles with kind confusion. “Do I know you?”

-

The only face everyone remembers is Allura’s. “Prince Lotor? I’m not familiar with the name,” Ryner says, strolling them leisurely through a large holding bay for all sorts of ships. Some are actively being worked on, while other projects have been abandoned for blatant staring and picture-taking.

Lance holds up a few peace signs, but his arms are heavy, so he trudges along at the back with Keith, who doesn’t do anything except keep his eyes pinned on Ryner as she speaks. 

“However, if you were near to any space-time rifts, even caught up in their destruction, there could be an explanation for what happened to you and your lions,” Ryner says. “Queen—I mean, Princess Allura, this may come as a shock to you, but I believe the only explanation is inter-dimensional travel caused by the rifts.”

“Well,” Allura begins. “I was beginning to suspect as much. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened.”

“Oh?” Ryner says. She leaves it at that. “Well, we cannot help you return back to your own reality here on Olkarion, but I’m sure the lead scientists on Altea will enjoy the challenge.”

“It’s not just a challenge,” Keith speaks up. Lance glances over as the entire group stops, turning to listen. Keith looks down, brows furrowed. “Our families and the universe are depending on us, and we can’t protect them if we’re stuck here.”

Ryner’s eyes soften. She dips her head at him. “Don’t worry. You will be in good hands.”

She leads them out of the holding bay and back upstairs, towards the roof where they landed in Kiran’s ship. Without much preamble, she gestures them into some sort of midway room. Lance stops in front of the door long enough for his helmet to unscramble the Olkariet over the door into English. ‘Telios Preparation Room.’

“Do you have Telios in your universe?” Ryner asks. 

“Big nope,” Lance replies. He steps into the room as everyone else peers around. Comfy chairs, some vines with pink blossoms braided into a nice decorative circle on the wall. And a table of purple juice in shot glasses. Hunk pinks up a cup and swirls it, pulling a face. 

“Ah, well, drink an entire cup of our Monga before you go,” Ryner says. “It can be pretty rough the first time around. The navigator will be here shortly to take you up. Goodbye Princess. Paladins.” 

Keith plops down in one of the chairs and crosses his legs. Allura, Hunk and Pidge each have a shot glass in their hands, swirling and sniffing. “What is this stuff?” Lance mutters, joining them. 

It sticks to the sides of the glass, thick like syrup. He whiffs at it. 

“Smells like nothing,” Hunk says. He takes a sip and shudders from head to toe, face pinching in pain. “Doesn’t—taste—like—nothing!”

“Don’t drink that,” Keith snaps. “What if its poisoned?”

“I’d rather not have rough time in the Telly-o, thanks,” Lance replies. He takes a sip and gags. It tastes like maple syrup mixed with Warheads. Hunk glances over at him, teary-eyed. They grab each other, weeping and shaking their heads. 

“It’s not so bad,” Allura says, and tips her head back, downing it in one go. “Monga? Tastes almost like Bulbaberry juice from Altea.”

“You drink this for fun?” Pidge asks. “One drop turned Lance and Hunk into crying babies.”

She shrugs, then smiles at Pidge, secretive. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

There’s a quick knock at the door, then an Olkari with rather official-looking robes on pops in. Probably the navigator. “The Telios is ready for a transfer to Altea. Follow me, if you will.”

Lance nods at Hunk and Hunk nods back. They hook their elbows, each downing a cup, before shuddering and gasping for air. Pidge taps at the bottom of her cup. “Eugh,” she shivers. When Keith gets up to follow them out, the Olkari stops him. 

“Paladin, have you taken your cup of Monga?” 

“No, and I’m not going to,” Keith says. Lance turns to look right as Keith cuts his eyes at the navigator. The same glare transfers over when Keith looks up and sees him, and Lance rips his eyes away, clinging tighter to Hunk. 

“Suit yourself,” the navigator says, then leads them upstairs and into a cicular room lit by a blue light, the unmistakable glow of Altean energy. In the center of the room is an empty loop sprouting up from the floor and around the circumference are giant control centers each with a seated Olkari with nodes on their heads, tapping at screens nobody can see. 

“This isn’t mind control, is it?” Lance whispers under his breath.

“They are inside of the computer’s brain,” the navigator says, hearing him. “Telios travel at any scale requires careful, precise control, and it is easier for the Olkari to monitor it this way.”

Allura nods. She circles around the loop and gasps as it sparks, a blue swirl beginning at the outer edges until it leaks all the way to the center. “It’s a miniature wormhole!” she exclaims. “But where is the teludav?”

“A what now?” The navigator asks. 

“Allura,” Lance says, interrupting as she opens her mouth to speak. “Aren’t you ready to see Altea again?”

She straightens and takes a few steps back from the loop’s side, biting her lip as the light reflects against her. The navigator gestures, “Any time you are ready you may pass through.”

Allura moves in front of them, all standing and staring at the wormhole. She takes a step forward, then pauses. “What if it’s not real?” Everyone else in the room falls away, leaving their team and no outsiders, the only ones who understand. Then she looks at Lance, and it’s her and him alone. “What if we’ve been mislead again by people we trust?”

Lance shakes his head at her. “Then we’ll tear this place apart.”

“You’re not alone,” Pidge says, stepping up beside Lance. “We can do this.”

“We won’t let any more space-douchebags put their hands on you,” Hunk promises. 

“I want to finally see what your home planet looks like,” Keith says, and Allura smiles, giving a wet, shaky laugh before wiping at her eyes. “Lead, the way, Allura.”

With everyone in the room staring at them, they step one by one into the Telios, and vanish.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The differences in our universes are troubling, to say the least, but we have not perfected a technology that controls inter-dimensional travel. It’s a map we can’t figure out how to coordinate, you see.”
> 
> Lance leans forward, trying to catch her eye. “You can’t get us back, can you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've upped the rating, added a few tags, AND posted my friend's awesome cover art on the first chapter so please go check it out if you want to be mind-blown! I'm going to start picking up the pace now that we're on Altea, but Lance and Keith are so heavy, & season 6 left them in such a weird place. That slowburn tag will be the death of me. 
> 
> Enjoy!

One step: Olkarion. The next: Altea. Allura jerks to a stop in front of Lance. He bumps into her, Hunk bumps into him, then Pidge, then Keith, until they’re a human-Altean…Galra-ish conga line in the middle of the Telios room, surrounded by Alteans with their mouths wide open. 

Keith is the last straw, making them all stumble forward. Allura turns and catches Lance before he can fall, her eyes impossibly blue. He doesn’t try to hide his surprise as she digs fingers into his upper bicep, a tear clinging to her right eyelash. "Altea," she begins, the stifles a sob against her hand.

“It’s okay to cry,” he says. 

Allura shakes her head then backs off. The room is quiet. She gives a soft, broken laugh. “I’ve been crying on you too much as of late.”

"Isn't that like, Lance's job?" Hunk says, brushing himself off as he wiggles out of the conga line. Lance rolls his eyes at him, and Allura smiles a bit, but nobody can find anything else to say as they wait and shake off the feeling of being mini-wormholed onto another planet.

It doesn't take long. A dark Altean with a shock of blond hair walks into the room and greets them and accompanies them from the room, explaining the situation. Queen Allura and her head advisor are currently in a meeting, although they would like everyone to become comfortable and rest as much as possible. The queen can’t wait to meet them. 

Lance lags at the back of their tour-group with Keith, who looks alert but miserable, like a little lost puppy. He keeps grabbing his stomach and grimacing. Lance rolls his eyes, falls a bit to the right of Keith, and nods ahead when Keith gives him a look. Thank you, Keith, but he is perfectly capable of watching everyone’s sixes. 

Not that he really needs to. 

“This place reminds me of the Castleship,” Pidge says, bouncing with each step and looking everywhere she can. “But wasn’t that designed by Coran’s great grandfather or someone?”

“Well, we don’t know what kind of reality this is,” Hunk replies. “For all we know, Coran might not even…oh, and now I made myself sad.”

Lance stares at the back of Allura’s head the entire walk, her straight shoulders and slow, paced walk; she looks sideways to gaze out the few windows there are up and down each corridor. A few times she wipes at her face with the back of her hand. 

“You’re worried,” Keith mutters, and Lance tries—and fails—to contain a yelp of surprise at the other paladin having fallen to his side without notice. 

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Lance mutters back. He cuts his eyes at Keith before shifting his stare to the back of Hunk’s head instead. 

“Well, don’t be,” Keith says. “Allura understands the mission at hand. We need to get back the lions and find out what Sendak and that witch are up to.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to the Altean geniuses who are going to find us a way back to our own reality then,” Lance replies. He feels a swell of bitterness, aching like a rotten tooth, somewhere in his chest. It begs to be dug out. “Thanks for…whatever that was. ‘Cuz it really helped.” 

Keith’s lips pop open, brow furrowing, but nothing comes out. Lance huffs and picks up his pace until he’s in stride with Hunk and Pidge, laughing at the tail end of Hunk’s joke about an alternate reality Pidge like he was there all along.

-

The rooms are colored coded. Of course they are. Their guide turns to Allura and informs her how Queen Allura specifically requested that everyone align room colors with their armor, and that Princess Allura take the black room. Press the button by the door if they needed anything at all.

“Oh, well, that’s—” Allura says, but allows herself to be led to the end of the corridor where the room with a black diamond overhead is. 

The rest of them are split off, two rooms on each side of the hallway: Blue and Red, Yellow and Green. Hunk and Pidge go in their rooms with yells of glee. Beds! Showers! Cool décor! Lance lingers in front of the blue door, looking down the hallway at the black room. Keith is also in front of the red door, watching him, still holding his stomach and looking pained. 

“Should have drank that juice, huh?” Lance calls. 

Keith straightens, hand falling away from his stomach. “I’m fine,” he snaps, and goes into his room without a second glance back. 

Lance scoffs, kicking at the ground. Their guide sends him a friendly look on his way back from Allura’s room, gesturing at the door. Lance flushes and ducks inside. He can’t hear Pidge or Hunk’s gleeful shouting anymore. Allura and Keith are nearby but still far away, and there’s a massive, plush bed in the center of his room with curtains of blue, rippling beads on all sides. 

“Rich people,” Lance mutters, beads slipping off his shoulders as he steps away.  
The blue room is full of someone else’s life. He tip-toes around. A trident is propped up in one corner. Glittery trinkets float around on all the shelves, overtaking the white furniture. 

There are photos of a blue alien smirking right at the camera and posing often with other aliens pasted everywhere. Most of all he’s with a lavender-colored Galra, their heads tilted together, pretending to look at each other while pulling goofy faces. 

Lance sucks in a breath. Scattered in with all the selfies is one picture with a cheeky, grey-haired Coran in the corner; behind him are armored paladins, all sprawled out around the black lion’s front paws, helmets off. A candid shot. 

Unmistakably, a short-haired Allura is in the middle of the group, her face squinting mid-laugh. She’s wearing the black armor. Helmet tucked under her arm. Beaming next to her is none other than King Alfor in the red suit, bearded but not quite elderly. Handsome.

“Uh oh,” he says, wheeling around towards the door. 

It slides open as soon as he approaches, and he nearly collides with Allura—no, the Allura from the picture. Short, curly hair. She’s a few inches taller than him. No circlet at her hairline, it rests on top instead, more like a tiara. 

“Uh—” he says, charmingly. “Sorry. I was just. Uh. Your majesty?”

“Please,” she replies. “Call me Lura. Or, your majesty works too.” Lura winks and he forgets how to breathe for a solid five seconds. She looks behind him and the open room, raising a brow. “May I come in?”

“Just uh—well yeah! Of course!” He backs up and to the side, bumping into one of the shelves and causing everything to rattle. As she sweeps inside he straightens, hands behind his back. “So. This is weird. Right?”

“It’s not ideal by any means,” Lura says. She pulls a trunk out from under the bed and sits on it, crossing her legs before grinning and patting the space next to her. He trips over, making her giggle. “You blue paladins don’t change, do you? I came to bring you this. It’ll re-hydrate and nourish you long enough for you to get some rest.”

“Oh thanks,” Lance begins, taking the bottle she holds out. Clutching it, he forgets what he was going to say, before he just points in the direction of the paladin picture. “It’s kind of weird that you’re the black paladin here, because our Allura is the blue paladin.”

“She told me,” Lura replies. She tugs at a strand of hair curling against her cheek before sighing heavily. “The differences in our universes are troubling, to say the least, but we have not yet perfected a technology that controls inter-dimensional travel. It’s a map we can’t figure out how to coordinate, you see.”

Lance leans forward, trying to catch her eye. “You can’t get us back, can you?” He whispers. 

“Not yet, at least,” Lura replies. She shakes her head, frowning. “The yellow and green paladins understood our dilemma and offered their assistance, but the red paladin did not take it well.” Her eyes flick up to him. “What do you think?”

He sits back a bit. “Uh,” Lance breathes. His fingers tap at his knees before he notices and curls them into fists. “I know the lions wouldn’t have ejected us out into deep space without good reason. We’re here for something. So, whatever you need, we can help.”

Lura nods and stands, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Lance. I know you’ve all had a long and troubling journey. Feel free to rest, take your armor off, and dress yourself if you can something suitable in the closet. Blaytz won’t mind.” She gives a little wave before going to the door. 

“Wait—” Lance begins, leaping up. “Are the old paladins…are they still alive?”

“Alive. And well,” Lura replies. She gives him an unreadable, perhaps polite smile, before the door slides open and swallows her into the corridor.

-

“Lance!”

Somebody is kicking his door down. Lance rolls over in the plush bed, dragging the covers over his head. If he just pretends like it’s a dream, then he can go back to sleep--

“Lance!” Pidge crows. “You’ve been asleep for ten-thousand deca-phoebs!” 

“Have not!” He yells back before slamming a pillow over his face, squishing it to his ears. 

“We’re going to a fancy Altean brunch without you!” Hunk calls. Lance huffs, tossing the face pillow across the room. The bed is too soft. He’s too warm. He stares up at the ceiling and doesn’t move. “Fine then! Enjoy eating the leftovers with Keith!” Their voices fade along with cackles and what sounds suspiciously like high fives. 

He slumps out of bed, slapping at the beads as they slither over him. Wearing that Blaytz dude’s clothes would be weird, so he just puts his armor back on and pushes his greasy hair around at the hairline and trots out into the hallway. Of course, Team Punk already left without him. 

“Thanks,” he mutters. A couple knocks at the red door reveal no sound. “Hello? Keith? We’re missing brunch or something.” Lance puts his ear against the door. “Are you even in here?”

Without warning, the door slides open. He stumbles forward into a bland looking room with nothing but a king-sized bed and some beige couches in an L-shape in one corner. “Hello?” Lance calls again. The bed is empty. “I swear, Pidge and Hunk must’ve just been—vomiting?”

Gross retching sounds are coming from the bathroom. Lance glances around, taking everything in as he walks over. The bed is neat, not slept in. A bottle just like the one Lura gave him—and that he chugged right after she left, is sitting on the dresser nearby, unopened. “Keith,” Lance hisses, and marches over to yank open the door. He nearly breaks an ankle on scattered pieces of red armor in the doorway. “Oh, shit.”

Keith is a hunched monstrosity with his face in the toilet bowl, hair loose and everywhere. He’s shaking. A horrific amount of sweat has darkened his undersuit. Lance flinches, then continues determinedly forward. “How long have you been puking?” He asks, grabbing Keith’s limp wrist and yanking the band off from around it. A few gathering motions later he has the majority of Keith’s stupid mullet tied back and he can see a pale cheek, sickening in color. 

“Go…away,” Keith heaves. He coughs again then paws up, leaning as he pulls the lever to flush like it takes all his strength. 

“Seriously?” Lance says. Whirling around, he kicks the red armor out of his way and brings the bottle back into the bathroom with them. “You were supposed to drink this.”

Keith slumps back against the wall, shaking his head ‘no’ so weakly it sends a jolt through Lance. He tosses the bottle aside and goes to his knees on the floor next to Keith, putting his hand against Keith’s forehead. The other groans softly at the touch, limp. “Can you not hold your head up? Your skin is on fire. This is bad.”

Lance gets up and leaves Keith to find the call button their guide mentioned. It's in the same place a switch would be if this was Earth. Instead of lights he gets a cheery voice, asking what he needs. “My friend Keith the red paladin has been throwing up for who knows how long and he didn’t drink that stupid drink and his temperature is through the frickin’ roof and so he needs a healing pod. Right now. What do I do.”

The voice is quiet for an alarming moment. “Can he make it to the infirmary?”

“We don’t even know where that is,” Lance says. He hears something thump in the bathroom and glances over his shoulder, slapping a hand at the wall as the voice says nothing before jerking around. “I’ll figure it out!”

As he goes back into the bathroom he finds Keith on the floor laying on his side, breathing in shallow, rapid gasps. Lance can’t seem to breathe either. He grabs Keith up as fast as he can and backs them both out of the bathroom. The voice in the wall is still talking, repeating the same instructions.

“I’ve mapped out your course with our emergency lights,” she says. “Follow the purple ones.”

Lance steps out into the hallway and sees one side of the high-tech torches lining the middle of the corridors are lit purple. Keith’s breathing doesn’t slow as he grips him hard and goes as fast as he can, following the lights. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Lance repeats under his breath. "Everything is gonna be okay." 

By the time he makes it to the infirmary he’s panting, having ran up too many flights of stairs. A couple Alteans are waiting for him as he comes through the door, their hair pinned up and faces covered with masks. Lance holds Keith tight despite one of the Alteans’ arms reaching out to grab him. 

“Bring him here,” the other says, as a vertical pod hisses open to his right. 

Lance nearly collapses into the pod with Keith as he sets him in. Stumbling back, he waits for the blue glass to materialize before setting his hands flat against it and sucking in air. “He’s gonna be alright?”

The two Alteans are standing over the pod, both holding transparent tablets as they swipe and tap, periodically looking at Keith. His breathing evens out. A peaceful expression smooths his face. 

“Yes, he will be fine,” one of the Alteans says.

Exhaling, Lance slides his hands off the pod and flops down on the floor, resting his head back against it. There’s a clatter of feet from outside and then the rest of the team burst through the doors. Allura gasps when she sees him. “Lance! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lance says, closing his eyes. “Keith’s the one in the healing pod.”

“Is he okay?” Pidge asks. “We just heard there’d been an emergency in the paladin quarters, so we came here as fast as we could—”

“You’d think we’d be used to putting each other in healing pods by now,” Lance mutters, and stands up, not looking at any of them as they glance up from Keith to him. He shakes out his arms, still burdened with ghost weight and aching. “He’s just--stupid.”

Hunk steps away from the pod. He nudges Lance with a shoulder, smiling. “Come on. We saved you some brunch after all. Now you can even get Keith’s share too.” Lance nods, and Hunk grabs his hand to tug him out of the infirmary, leaving Pidge and Allura whispering after them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Altean buffets are nice. Lance, Lura, and Allura go to the spa. Lura reveals the divergence in their realities, and Allura comes clean about other matters at hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot to say about this chapter, but I refuse. I just really enjoyed writing it & it flowed out so easily, which is why I'm posting again so early in the morning! 
> 
> Really hope you guys enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing! <3

“—and this stuff, you bite into it and its like a little poof of jelly squirts out, it’s the best, Pidge and I ate like twenty. Then you have drinks. Allura was gone with the other Allura so we had to just guess what they’re made of. This is like, nut milk? Lance? Are you listening? I just said, this is _nut milk_.”

Lance shakes himself, gazing down at plate then up at Hunk, who is still pointing at the pitcher full of green milky stuff with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, very funny,” Lance obliges. “This place is nothing like I imagined.”

It’s a bit like a five-star hotel in Las Vegas, not that he’s ever been there, but there’s a lot of leafy fronds and giant windows to let the sunlight beam down onto the rows of tables where aliens of all shapes and colors are eating and chatting. Even some that look…distinctly Galra-ish? 

“I like it,” Hunk says. He takes Lance’s plate from him and runs down the buffet line again, filling in the gaps Lance left for some of the more suspicious foods. “It’s not quiet like the Castleship was, and everyone looks so happy, and we aren’t the center of attention. I feel kind of normal.”

Lance blinks as Hunk pushes the plate back into his hands and fills up a cup with the green milk before slurping it down. Lance’s lip curls. “Hunk, you can never be normal,” he says, before shrugging and filling his own cup with the same stuff. 

Hunk picks at his plate as they sit down, trying to explain the foodstuffs further. Lance is grateful. It reminds him of the early days in the Garrison cafeteria when Hunk was his only friend, both feeling they deserved to be there but still not quite belonging either—an outsider’s sentiment reflected on the faces of the other trainees: young, mean, and overeager. But Hunk had always been too nice to dislike.

“So,” Hunk says, breaking off from his rambling. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“We are talking,” Lance deflects. He drinks some of the milk, puffing up in surprise at the rich taste, as Hunk rolls his eyes. 

“No, I’m talking at you and you’re doing that thing where you nod and look like you’re listening but you’re not,” Hunk replies. Lance nods at him. “See!”

Lance slurps aggressively at the milk, peering at Hunk over the rim. He smacks his lips until Hunk glares at him. Scary. He sets the cup down and scoots it away. “I’m just worried."

“About Keith?” Hunk asks, propping his hands up under his chin, face softening instantly. 

“Yea—no, no, why would I be worried about Keith? He’s in a healing pod, he’s fine, whatever.” Lance pops one of the jelly things into his mouth and chews, groaning in satisfaction as Hunk grins smugly. “Just--" he swallows the jelly. "--this whole situation. Lura said she didn’t know if she could find us a way back.”

“I said what now?” 

Lura, Allura and Pidge all drop down onto the bench on Hunk's side across from Lance. Allura and Lura next to each other—yeah, he’s never going to get used to that. Pidge nudges Hunk with her elbow. “I think his brain just short-circuited.”

“Actually, my brain is working just fine, thank you,” Lance says, half-turning away from them and gulping down the rest of his milk while Hunk and Pidge giggle. Lura and Allura exchange a look in his peripheral, before Lura reaches across the table and touches his forearm. 

“I’m sorry about what happened with Keith,” she says. “He was lucky you were there. You’re a good friend.”

Lance sets his cup down. He resists the urge to fidget with his hands, half-turning back and crossing them in front of him instead. Before he can say anything in reply, Lura raises a brow at Allura, who shifts and purposefully meets Lance’s eyes. He swallows as everyone else looks at him too. 

“So…Lance, Lura thought it would be best for us to have a day to relax considering well, everything, and we were wondering if you would like to join us in the spa?” 

“Oh, now you really broke him,” Pidge says, as Lance opens his mouth and closes it a few times at her. 

“Wh-what about Pidge and Hunk?” He tries. 

“Not really my thing,” Pidge replies. 

“I’d love to,” Hunk says. “But we were promised a tour of the Telios’ engine room and personally I would very much like to bring that tech back to our universe since there’s not a whole lot we can do about the alternate reality situation right now.”

“Oh,” Lance murmurs, then shrugs. “Sure, why not?” 

Lura claps her hands together with a happy flourish. “Excellent! Taro will be here shortly to take you two down and then us three can leave as soon as you finish.” She gives Lance’s picked-over plate a critical look. He starts shoveling the food in and Lura laughs, such a wonderful sound that he looks up with his cheeks full to see Allura glancing over at her giggling counterpart, confused, like he’s just told a joke she didn’t hear the punch-line to.

-

Lance feels brand new after a shower and putting on the fluffy robe and slip-ons one of the spa attendants gave him. His armor, Lura promised, would be cleaned and returned to the blue room, not that he minds. He can feel pores that haven’t had a breath of fresh air in months gasping as he’s led past simmering pools full of aliens with face masks on, closed doors billowing steam under them and open doors with empty pits of colorful goop waiting.

An attendant leads him back to a private, master room where Allura and Lura are. They are leaning back in comfy chairs, faces covered in a blue mask, feet dipped into pools and already being worked on by an alien with four arms, chatting. 

“It’s all really complicated,” Allura is saying, as Lura hums in agreement. 

He trots over, plopping down in the third comfy chair to the right of Lura and putting his feet in the burbling water. The four-armed alien, not any kind he’s ever seen before, glances up from Allura’s toes and gives him a two-fingered salute with one of his free arms. “ _Ciao_ ,” he says. 

“You speak French?” he asks, as both Alluras glance over and asks what a French is. “Never mind.”

“Anyway. Allura was just telling me about what happened to your former black paladin,” Lura begins instead, tilting her head to look at him. He stares at the wall where an ornate mirror is reflecting his troubled expression. “I could never imagine over half of our team having to switch lions in the middle of war.”

“You did have to become the black paladin though, didn’t you?” Lance wonders. “There used to be a…a Zarkon, right?”

Lura’s face hardens. She shakes her head, breaking off their gazes to sit back straight in the seat and stare at the ceiling instead. Before she can speak another attendant approaches Lance, holding a cup and a brush in his hand. He smiles and gestures for Lance to close his eyes, then starts applying an icy cold mask. 

Unable to look, he strains his ears to listen as Lura talks. “There was. My father and the others were never the same after they emerged from the rift on Daibazaal. Zarkon risked it all to get Honerva more quintessence and…it cost them their lives.”

“The paladins couldn’t save them?” Lance whispers. 

“Perhaps,” Lura replies, her voice just as quiet. “My father tried to grab them, but without a pilot for Black, the strain was too much on the other four. If they hadn’t left then, they all would have perished.”

Lance sighs, remembering the panic throbbing through him as they gazed down at Lotor’s sincline ships, floating away from them in the rift, the decision to go down or out. The brush stops stroking across his face and he opens his eyes to see Allura looking sideways at him then away, tearing up. The attendant leaves. 

“Zarkon may have become poisoned in your reality, but he did what he did out of love for Honerva, and I know my father will always regret what happened,” Lura says, her mouth twisting. “Especially…after we found the ultrasounds.”

Lance tenses. Allura gasps softly. Lura purses her lips, glancing between them both. Allura shakes her head at him, so he draws in a breath. “That would be Prince Lotor in our reality,” he says. “We ended up fighting him…and also leaving him behind in the quintessence rift.”

“Oh,” Lura says. She frowns and looks over at Allura. “The Lotor you told me about?”

Allura brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Let’s not,” she breathes, and pulls a face at Lura. “Later.” Her eyes flick meaningfully towards Lance. “Not right now.”

Lance looks down, plucking at the fuzzy arm of his robe. “I can leave,” he says, and shrugs. “Girl talk, I get it.” He pulls his dripping feet out of the pool and gets up. 

“No, no, Lance,” Allura begins. She twists in the seat to look at him. “I just…it’s already hard enough to talk about him and what happened. And I’m still trying to figure out all my feelings, and I don’t want to upset you as well.”

Lance can’t quite get himself to sit back down. He stares at her, her eyes wide open, pleading, the pretty pout that either makes him talk too much or shut up entirely bent with unease, and tries out a chuckle, scratching the back of his head. “Why…why would you make me upset?”

Allura pulls back. She waves a hand at the air vaguely, then puts her princess voice on. “I would never intentionally hurt you, but I know what happened between me and Lotor couldn’t have been easy for you, and I—”

Lura and the four-armed alien are both sitting very still. Lance can’t look at them. He feels frozen, staring at Allura as she keeps glancing away from him, like his eyes hurt, or she can’t stand what she’s seeing in them. “I know how you feel,” she finishes. “The mice told me.”

“Oh,” Lance says. He crosses his arms, wanting to make a joke about stupid snitching rodents, but all that comes out is, “You didn’t say anything.”

Allura draws in a breath. Her teeth scrape across her bottom lip, brows furrowing. He is already recoiling as she shakes her head at him, voice cracking. “Lance. I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea, or to make things more complicated than they already were.” She takes another deep breath. “I feel a lot of things about you, Lance.” Again, a breath. “But none of them are…quite like that.”

Lance nods at her. He feels a lot like he did in the simulations during recruitment. Level one, a few moments of level two, explosion. The teacher said his name followed by ‘just good enough’ to the senior officer waiting nearby. “I understand,” he says. “I really do.”

“Lance,” Allura says, and starts to get up, but he’s already out of the room, head down so nobody can see his eyes. An attendant tries to catch his arm as he leaves the spa, but he goes right through her. 

It takes approximately five minutes for him to realize he has no quiznacking idea where he’s going. Maybe because he’s the alien in this world, nobody gives him much of a second glance as he wanders the corridors, hugging himself, barefooted, and sniffling. 

Then an Altean that looks vaguely familiar does give him quite a few looks, even going so far as to walk backwards and peer into his face. “Are you sick too?” She says. It’s one of the doctors from earlier. He nods a few times. Very slowly. “Come, then.”

Keith’s pod is still the only one being used when they come back into the infirmary. She leaves him standing alone and goes to rummage around in a side room. He shrugs, trotting over to the pod and peering in. 

“He should be out soon,” the doctor calls. She joins him, waving her hand over the glass. A controls panel appears and she presses a few buttons one-handed. Keith’s pulse illuminates over his chest, arcing along the line, among a few other details he can’t read. “See how strong he is? No time at all.”

“You’re right,” Lance says. He digs his fingers into the fluff of the robe over his bicep. “I’m not actually sick, so sorry I lied and wasted your time.”

The doctor laughs. She pulls her mask down, revealing a bright smile and blue markings. “A patient doesn’t have to be sick to need help from me,” she says. “I thought you might like to see your friend. And get that gunk off your face.” From behind her back she hands him a cloth. “Now, I’m going on my lunch break and to make sure my little brother didn’t fall into the Gorgus tank again.”

“Um—” Lance turns around. He squints as the doctor turns back to him, humming at him over her shoulder. “I didn’t catch your name?”

“My name is Romelle,” she says, and winks at him. “But that’s Dr. Romelle to you.” 

Then, laughing at his open mouth, she trots from the room, the door hissing shut behind her. 

Lance rubs at his forehead, the mask cracking underneath his fingers. He leans against Keith’s pod, wiping it off. Blue smears in the cloth as he ends up scrubbing his entire face roughly before throwing the cloth at the ground. “I’m so stupid,” he mutters, and picks it up, biting his bottom lip as it starts to tremble. 

He ends up sitting on the floor next to Keith’s pod, legs crossed, clutching the blue-stained cloth in his fist, cheeks stinging from where he’d rubbed the mask off. Why did he always have to say the wrong things? Do the wrong things? Be the wrong things?

Above him, there’s the unmistakable unzipping hiss of the healing pod opening. Lance scrubs at his eyes with the sleeve of his robe and gets up, smiling down as Keith squints, blinking a couple times up at him. “Welcome back to the world of the living!” Lance cries and throws his cloth across the room in celebration. 

“Am I dreaming?” Keith mutters, staring directly up at Lance, entirely too alert for someone who was deathly sick a couple vargas ago. “Were you crying?”

Lance draws back. He touches his face, feeling how swollen he is around his eyes, how hot. “I went to the spa with Allura and Lura and there was a weird face mask, it messed me up. That’s why I’m here, you see. Did you know Romelle was your doctor?”

Keith sits up and climbs out of the pod, holding a hand against his head and looking at Lance with his eyes narrowed. When he swoons sideways, Lance jerks forward, grabbing his arm. “Easy,” Lance says. “I kinda thought you were gonna die.”

“You brought me here,” Keith says, raspy. He goes to run a hand through his hair and finds the messy ponytail at the back of his head, pulling the band out and looking at it. “I remember. You kept saying everything was going to be okay.”

Lance draws his hand away, trying to keep breathing evenly. He still feels raw, overstrung, but he shrugs at Keith and presses on. “Well. I guess we’re even, then?”

Keith gives him an odd look. “About what?” He rolls his shoulders, giving the infirmary a sweeping, alert examination before letting his eyes rest back on Lance, just looking, not even scowling. 

“You probably forgot.” Lance forces a laugh. “When that fake Rover blew up our crystal and I jumped on top of Coran, then you carried me to the healing pod? Uhm. Do you have something in your eyes?”

“You do remember!” Keith yells, and stops blinking like a broken screen. Then he puts a finger against his lips and bites down on it. Lance wonders if he’s going to explode, if he should run from the room and never look back, when Keith perks back up. “Do you remember what you said?”

“Nah,” Lance says, flapping a hand. “I was in and out, the burns were pretty bad.”

Keith’s gaze flickers, light hitting his weird violet eyes then falling away. “Oh. Never mind then.” He pulls at the hairband now back on his wrist. “Thanks, by the way. Do you know if there’s any food goo around here?”

Lance grins, wiggling his brows at Keith, who huffs at him. This he can do. The routine they carved out a long time ago before Keith went away, he can manage. “Oh man, do I have news for you about Altea. No food goo in sight. And there’s a drink you need to try. They call it _nut milk._ ”

“You’re lying,” Keith replies, and Lance swings an arm around his shoulders, scoffing and simpering back, “Would I ever lie to you?” 

“About a drink being called _that_? Absolutely,” Keith says, and a touch as soft as a butterfly lands on Lance’s side as Keith wraps an arm around him in turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then both idiots realize neither of them know where the fuck they're going, and argue about stopping to ask for directions, until Keith drags Lance up to a random alien. They've gone halfway across the palace by then.


End file.
